Putting the War in Iraq in Perspective
SOME OF YOU ARE NOT OLD ENOUGH TO REMEMBER THAT NEARLY EVERY FAMILY IN
AMERICA WAS GROSSLY AFFECTED BY WW II . MOST OF YOU DON'T REMEMBER THE
RATIONING OF MEAT, SHOES, GASOLINE, AND SUGAR. NO TIRES FOR OUR
AUTOMOBILES, AND A SPEED LIMIT OF 35 MILES AN HOUR ON THE ROAD, NOT TO
MENTION, NO NEW AUTOMOBILES. READ THIS AND THINK ABOUT HOW WE WOULD
REACT TO BEING TAKEN OVER BY FOREIGN POWERS IN 2008.
This is an EXCELLENT essay . Well thought out and presented.
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Historical Significance for today's world:
Sixty-three years ago, Nazi Germany had overrun almost all of Europe
and hammered England to the verge of bankruptcy and defeat. The Nazis
had sunk more than 400 British ships in their convoys between England
and America taking food and war materials
At that time the US was in an isolationist, pacifist mood, and most
Americans wanted nothing to do with the European or the Asian war
Then along came Pearl Harbor on December 7, 1941 , and in outrage
Congress unanimously declared war on Japan , and the following day on
Germany , who had not yet attacked us . It was a dicey thing . We had
few allies
France was not an ally, as the Vichy government of France quickly
aligned itself with its German occupiers . Germany was certainly not an
ally, as Hitler was intent on setting up a Thousand Year Reich in
Europe. Japan was not an ally, as it was well on its way to owning and
controlling all of Asia.
Together, Japan and Germany had long-range plans of invading Canada and
Mexico , as launching pads to get into the United States over our
northern and southern borders, after they finished gaining control of
Asia and Europe.
America 's only allies then were England , Ireland , Scotland , Canada
, Australia, and Russia . That was about it All of Europe, from Norway
to Italy (except Russia in the East) was already under the Nazi heel
The US was certainly not prepared for war. The US had drastically
downgraded most of its military forces after WW I because of the
depression, so that at the outbreak of WW II, Army units were training
with broomsticks because they didn't have guns, and cars with "tank"
painted on the doors because they didn't have real tanks A huge chunk
of our Navy had just been sunk or damaged at Pearl Harbor.
Britain had already gone bankrupt, saved only by the donation of $600
million in gold bullion in the Bank of England (that was actually the
property of Belgium ) given by Belgium to England to carry on the war
when Belgium was overrun by Hitler (a little known fact).
Actually, Belgium surrendered on one day, because it was unable to
oppose the German invasion, and the Germans bombed Brussels into rubble
the next day just to prove they could.
Britain had already been holding out for two years in the face of
staggering losses and the near decimation of its Royal Air Force in the
Battle of Britain, and was saved from being overrun by Germany only
because Hitler made the mistake of thinking the Brits were a relatively
minor threat that could be dealt with later. Hitler, first turned his
attention to Russia, in the late summer of 1940 at a time when England
was on the verge of collapse.
Ironically, Russia saved America 's butt by putting up a desperate
fight for two years, until the US got geared up to begin hammering away
at Germany
Russia lost something like 24,000,000 people in the sieges of
Stalingrad and Moscow alone . . 90% of them from cold and starvation,
mostly civilians, but also more than a 1,000,000 soldiers
Had Russia surrendered, Hitler would have been able to focus his entire
war effort against the Brits, then America. If that had happened, the
Nazis could possibly have won the war.
All of this has been brought out to illustrate that turning points in
history are often dicey things. Now, we find ourselves at another
one of those key moments in history.
There is a very dangerous minority in Islam that either has, or wants,
and may soon have, the ability to deliver small nuclear, biological, or
chemical weapons, almost anywhere in the world.
The Jihadis, the militant Muslims, are basically Nazis in Kaffiyahs --
they believe that Islam, a radically conservative form of Wahhabi
Islam, should own and control the Middle East first, then Europe, then
the world. To them, all who do not bow to their will of thinking should
be killed, enslaved, or subjugated . They want to finish the Holocaust,
destroy Israel, and purge the world of Jews. This is their mantra.
(goal)
There is also a civil war raging in the Middle East -- for the most
part not a hot war, but a war of ideas. Islam is having its
Inquisition and its Reformation, but it is not yet known which side
will win -- the Inquisitors, or the Reformationists.
If the Inquisition wins, then the Wahhabis, the Jihadis, will control
the Middle East, the OPEC oil, and the US , European, and Asian
economies.
The techno-industrial economies will be at the mercy of OPEC -- not an
OPEC dominated by the educated, rational Saudis of today, but an OPEC
dominated by the Jihadis. Do you want gas in your car? Do you want
heating oil next winter? Do you want the dollar to be worth anything?
You had better hope the Jihad, the Muslim Inquisition, loses, and the
Islamic Reformation wins.
If the Reformation movement wins, that is, the moderate Muslims who
believe that Islam can respect and tolerate other religions, live in
peace with the rest of the world, and move out of the 10th century into
the 21st, then the troubles in the Middle East will eventually fade
away. A moderate and prosperous Middle East will emerge.
We have to help the Reformation win, and to do that we have to fight
the Inquisition, i.e., the Wahhabi movement, the Jihad, Al Qaeda and
the Islamic terrorist movements. We have to do it somewhere. We
can't do it everywhere at once. We have created a focal point for the
battle at a time and place of our choosing . . . . . . . . in Iraq .
Not in New York, not in London, or Paris or Berlin, but in Iraq, where
we are doing two important things.
(1) We deposed Saddam Hussein. Whether Saddam Hussein was
directly involved in the 9/11 terrorist attack or not, it is undisputed
that Saddam has been actively supporting the terrorist movement for
decades Saddam is a terrorist! Saddam is, or was, a weapon of mass
destruction, responsible for the deaths of probably more than a
1,000,000 Iraqis and 2,000,000 Iranians .
(2) We created a battle, a confrontation, a flash point, with Islamic
terrorism in Iraq. We have focused the battle. We are killing bad
people, and the ones we get there we won't have to get here. We
also have a good shot at creating a democratic, peaceful Iraq, which
will be a catalyst for democratic change in the rest of the Middle
East, and an outpost for a stabilizing American military presence in
the Middle East for as long as it is needed.
WW II, the war with the Japanese and German Nazis, really began with a
"whimper" in 1928. It did not begin with Pearl Harbor. It
began with the Japanese invasion of China. It was a war for
fourteen years before the US joined it. It officially ended in
1945 -- a 17 year war -- and was followed by another decade of US
occupation in Germany and Japan to get those countries reconstructed
and running on their own again. A 27-year war.
WW II cost the United States an amount equal to approximately a full
year's GDP -- adjusted for inflation, equal to about $12 trillion
dollars. WW II cost America more than 400,000 soldiers killed in
action, and nearly 100,000 still missing in action.
The Iraq war has, so far, cost the United States about $160 billion,
which is roughly what the 9/11 terrorist attack cost New York. It
has also cost about 3,000 American lives, which is roughly equivilant
to lives that the Jihad killed (within the United States) in the 9/11
terrorist attack.
The cost of not fighting and winning WW II would have been unimaginably
greater -- a world dominated by Japanese Imperialism and German Nazism.
This is not a 60-Minutes TV show, or a 2-hour movie in which everything
comes out okay . The real world is not like that. It is messy,
uncertain, and sometimes bloody and ugly. It always has been, and
probably always will be.
The bottom line is that we will have to deal with Islamic terrorism
until we defeat it, whenever that is. It will not go away if we ignore
it .
If the US can create a reasonably democratic and stable Iraq, then we
have an ally, like England, in the Middle East, a platform, from which
we can work to help modernize and moderate the Middle East. The history
of the world is the clash between the forces of relative civility and
civilization, and the barbarians clamoring at the gates to conquer the
world.
The Iraq War is merely another battle in this ancient and never ending
war. Now, for the first time ever, the barbarians are about to get
nuclear weapons. Unless somebody prevents them from getting them.
We have four options:
1 . We can defeat the Jihad now, before it gets nuclear weapons.
2 . We can fight the Jihad later, after it gets nuclear weapons (which
may be as early as next year, if Iran 's progress on nuclear weapons is
what Iran claims it is).
3 . We can surrender to the Jihad and accept its dominance in the
Middle East now; in Europe in the next few years or decades, and
ultimately in America.
OR
4 . We can stand down now, and pick up the fight later when the Jihad
is more widespread and better armed, perhaps after the Jihad has
dominated France and Germany and possibly most of the rest of Europe.
It will, of course, be more dangerous, more expensive, and much
bloodier.
If you oppose this war, I hope you like the idea that your children, or
grandchildren, may live in an Islamic America under the Mullahs and the
Sharia, an America that resembles Iran today.
The history of the world is the history of civilization clashes,
cultural clashes. All wars are about ideas, ideas about what society
and civilization should be like, and the most determined always win.
Those who are willing to be the most ruthless always win. The
pacifists always lose, because the anti-pacifists kill them.
Remember, perspective is everything, and America 's schools teach too
little history for perspective to be clear, especially in the young
American mind.
The Cold War lasted from about 1947 at least until the Berlin Wall came
down in 1989 -- forty-two years!
Europe spent the first half of the 19th century fighting Napoleon, and
from 1870 to 1945 fighting Germany!
World War II began in 1928, lasted 17 years, plus a ten year
occupation, and the US still has troops in Germany and Japan . World
War II resulted in the death of more than 50,000,000 people, maybe more
than 100,000,000 people, depending on which estimates you accept.
The US has taken more than 3,000 killed in action in Iraq.. The US took
more than 4,000 killed in action on the morning of June 6, 1944 , the
first day of the Normandy Invasion to rid Europe of Nazi Imperialism.
In WW II the US averaged 2,000 KIA a week -- for four years. Most of
the individual battles of WW II lost more Americans than the entire
Iraq war has done so far.
The stakes are at least as high. A world dominated by
representative governments with civil rights, human rights, and
personal freedoms... or a world dominated by a radical Islamic
Wahhabi movement, by the Jihad, under the Mullahs and the Sharia
(Islamic law).
It's difficult to understand why the average American does not grasp
this. They favor human rights, civil rights, liberty and freedom,
but evidently not for Iraqis.
"Peace Activists" always seem to demonstrate here in America, where
it's safe.
Why don't we see Peace Activist demonstrating in Iran, Syria, Iraq,
Sudan, North Korea, in the places that really need peace activism the
most? I'll tell you why! They would be killed!
The liberal mentality is supposed to favor human rights, civil rights,
democracy, multiculturalism, diversity, etc., but if the Jihad wins,
wherever the Jihad wins, it is the end of civil rights, human rights,
democracy, multiculturalism, diversity, etc.
Americans who oppose the liberation of Iraq are coming down on the side
of their own worst enemy!
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Raymond S . Kraft is a writer living in Northern California that has
studied the Middle Eastern culture and religion
